RADICAL HISTORY NETWORK (RaHN)

The Radical History Network(RaHN)is a blog that operates as a forum for radical history groups to publish reviews, reports and articles on various aspects of radical history, and advertise meetings and act as a discussion forum for those interested in radical history. It is broadly libertarian socialist in outlook.
E-mail us at radicalhistorynetwork@gmail.com

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Monday, March 2, 2015

Brought forward, new, updated...North-West EnglandSave the Date! Monday March 30th 6pm-7pm @City
Archives Part 2 : Sisters with Mourning Hearts: These dangerous women!
Manchester women and The Hague Congress 1915The draft plan for the second part of the series about anti-war women in
the NW is:

A short film about young
Manchester activists in WW1 introduced by Sue Reddish

A film of the reconstruction
of The Hague delegation in 1915 ( made by the Clapham Film Unit in
conjunction with WILPF, HLF funded) and introduced by the film
maker(hopefully!)

A brief
illustrated talk by Ali Ronan about the political intrigue
surrounding the election of the Manchester delegates and the development
of the Women's International League in the city and the region during
1915.

Wakefield

Democracy and the Media: Struggles for Media Pluralism Past and
Present..

We are
holding a pre-election meeting around the theme DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA looking
at the struggle for media pluralism past and present.The
meeting will be held at the Red Shed, Vicarage Street, Wakefield WF1 on
Saturday 18th April, 1pm.The
main speaker is GRANVILLE WILLIAMS.Granville
is a member of the National Council of the CAMPAIGN FOR PRESS AND BROADCASTING
FREEDOM and UK Co-ordinator of the EUROPEAN INITIATIVE FOR MEDIA PLURALISM.He is
also the editor of a new book, BIG MEDIA AND INTERNET TITANS.Free
admission and free light buffet.We are
also looking for other speakers for this event so if interested -or if you have
suggestions for speakers- please get in touch.

Our International
Women's Day event on Saturday
7 March at 2pm is a talk by Tansy Hoskins about her book Stitched Up - the Anti-Capitalist Book
of Fashion. All welcome, admission free.

The
book delves into the alluring world of fashion, to reveal what is behind the
clothes we wear. Moving between Karl Lagerfeld and Karl Marx, the book explores
consumerism, class and advertising to reveal the interests that benefit from
exploitation.

Stitched Up won the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Bookshop's Book of the Year for 2014.

This
talk is part of the Wonder Women series of events. Other events taking
place include Radical
Jewish Women, a free talk by Rosalyn Livshin, at Manchester
Jewish Museum on Sunday 1 March at 2pm.

From
anarchists in the 1900s, to communists in the 1920s and anti-fascists in the
1930s, Jewish women in Manchester have been defying traditional conventions and
have been active in radical political circles. These women will be the focus of
this talk with historian Rosalyn Livshin, who will build on her PhD research
into political non-conformity in Manchester's Jewish Community between 1889 and
1939 to explore women's roles in Manchester's radical political movements - and
the impact they had within the Jewish community.

The first talk in the Library's new Invisible Histories series is on
Wednesday 11 March at 2pm: From Bilbao to Manchester: the Basque child
refugees of 1937 by Charles Jepson.
In June 1937 a large group of
Basque refugee children arrived in Manchester. They had fled their homes in
Bilbao in order to escape the daily bombardment inflicted by Franco's fascist
forces during the Spanish Civil War. They would spend the next two years living
in a number of Basque Colonies in the Manchester region.
Admission free; all welcome.

Future talks in the series are as follows:

Wed 25 March ''Red Nelson": the English working class and the making of
C.L.R. James - Christian Hogsbjerg
Wed 8 April The people: the rise
and fall of the working class, 1910-2010 - Selina Todd
Wed 22 April
Notoriously militant: the story of a union branch at Ford Dagenham - Sheila
Cohen
More information at www.wcml.org.uk/events.

Evan Smith
(Flinders University) and Matthew Worley (University of Reading) are
considering chapter proposals for a second edited volume on the British far
left in the post-war era (1945 to the present). We are currently seeking
chapter proposals on the following topics:

• The new (and non-aligned) left
• Feminism, the women’s movement and the left
• The left and the politics of sex/sexuality
• The role of the left in the trade union movement
• The changing attitudes towards class by the far left
• Militant/Socialist Party (and the politics of entryism)
• The left and devolution
• The Healyite groups – The Club, Socialist Labour League, Workers
Revolutionary Party
• Anti-revisionism/Maoism in Britain
• The left and electoral politics (Socialist Alliance, RESPECT, TUSC, etc)
• Anti-War/Peace movements and the left
• The role of intellectuals on the left (such as Stuart Hall, E.P. Thompson,
Perry Anderson, etc)
• The left’s internationalism in the Cold War era
• The role of migrants and ethnic minorities on the left
• Or any other aspect of the British far left if suitably interesting.

We welcome proposals from both scholars and activists, but emphasise that
chapters must be presented in an academic format, written ‘objectively’ and
with references to primary source materials.

300 word abstracts and a short bio should be sent to:
evan.smith@flinders.edu.au or m.worley@reading.ac.uk Please email either editor
with any further questions.

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS – MARCH 30, 2015

Details of the first volume, Against the Grain: The British Far Left
from 1956 (Manchester University Press, 2014), can be seen here:

From what I heard of Vol.1
at a launch meeting under the auspices of London Socialist Historians, it’s not strong on the libertarian side of things, apart
from some acknowledgement of anarchism. The suggestions for chapter proposals seem to offer some scope for rectifying this omission - not that writing chapters in expensive academic tomes is the best way to celebrate and remember our history, but it may help a bit, in the long term...

Likewise -

'What is Radical History?': A One-Day Post-Graduate Led Interdisciplinary ConferenceTuesday, March 24th 2015. Birkbeck, University of London.

Monday, February 9, 2015

The next meeting of the Radical History
Network of NE London group will focus on

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
(LGBT) struggles.

Wednesday 25th February 7.30 p.m.Wood Green Social Club 3 Stuart Crescent, N22 5NJ
(off the High Rd, near Wood Green tube)
Free to attend, all interested people welcome.

During the last half of the twentieth century LGBT people in the UK moved from
being invisible and illegal to being a campaigning force for equality to be
reckoned with. The RaHN group meeting will look at the history of these struggles,
including

Clause 28

the age of consent

and the everyday battle for survival.

North London wedding, summer 2012

Come along to share your experiences, and discuss how this history connects with campaigns today.

Speakers will include:

Vince Gillespie, a former Tottenham Labour Party Councillor who was a key figure in the Haringey Positive Images campaign. (Vince later got into trouble with Labour Party bigwigs for his support for the local anti-Poll Tax campaign).

Pam Isherwoodto speak about her involvement with lesbian campaigning etc.

Plus discussion and exchange of news & views.

UPDATE

<< At the Haringey History Fair on Saturday 14th the RaHN stall went well... although it was a bit quieter than in previous years..

At the RaHN meeting 'Out and Proud In North London' on 25th Feb... there may be an exciting proposal that we work with the Kino Van (see below) to unearth / restore / show local films about radical campaigns and movements - trying to find footage that people may have lying around unseen in their homes etc..

If you have any such archive footage / films from previous decades, please let us know the details (e.g. date,

subject/event, who organised, how long is the footage, what format etc etc). >>

Archive Footage To Tour Boroughs In Cinema-In-A-Van

Film London is giving Londoners a chance to see archive
footage of the city ­ by taking a new cinema-in-a-van around 15 London
boroughs.

The KinoVan, which launched outside the British Museum today,
is similar to those used by councils in the 1920s. The mobile cinema forms part
of the three-year London: A Bigger Picture project, put together by Londons Screen Archives.

A Bigger Picture seeks to
encourage Londoners to enjoy and engage with the citys rich film heritage. The
van will visit boroughs, screening a programme of heritage films in each one,
showing how past residents of the area lived and how the city has changed over
the years.

Footage featured in the project so far includes scenes from
Hounslow, Hackney and Wembley during the 1953 Coronation, festive shots of a
frozen Trafalgar Square, and Merton and Morden Auxiliary Fire Service taking
part in drills from 1939-1941.

Londoners are encouraged to contribute
their own footage. People from Haringey and Barking and Dagenham have already
donated family films from the 1950s and 1960s, offering a glimpse of domestic
life back then

14th Feb 2015 LGBT
History Month talk - 'Unity is Strength – Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners
and their lasting links of comradeship with mining communities’ . Speakers:
Mike Jackson, co-founder with Mark Ashton of Lesbians and Gays Support the
Miners (LGSM), and David (Dai) Donovan, South Wales NUM.

7th Mar 2015 (Eve
of International Women's Day) Tansy Hoskins talks about her book Stitched Up - The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion.

19th Mar 2015 Exhibition ‘probing behind the myths
of war and its "glories"’: The
Great War: myths and realities explores topics such as Salford's response
to the outbreak of war, the strength of the anti-war movement locally and
nationally, what happened to the campaign which had gathered momentum by 1914
to get the vote for women - and the realities of trench warfare. Open
Wednesdays to Fridays 1-5p.m.

25th Mar 2015 ''Red Nelson": the English
working class and the making of C.L.R. James - Christian Hogsbjerg

8th Apr 2015 The People: the Rise and Fall
of the Working Class, 1910-2010 - Selina Todd

The workshop agenda is available to download here, as is an extended
version including abstracts for each talk here.<< Like the WHBBH1 event hosted in London
in October 2014, presentations at WHBBH2 will cover a wide range of topics -
from Sport to Culture, WW1 soldiers to West End sound systems - so
there’s sure to be something for everyone.>>You can book
online here- EarlyBird tickets are priced from £5 -

There will be a meeting on 19 February in London at 1.30. Friends House in Euston.

We will have a short NfP business meeting followed by a discussion on where we are with WW1 Campaigning.

We also hope to have a guest speaker, an academic who will report on her research (just waiting for a confirmation).

No need to confirm your place, or send your apologies. But if you cannot come and have something interesting to report please send something to me in good time for me to distribute before the meeting if at all possible.

Monday
February 2nd Matthew
Burnett-Stewart, Arming both sides. The Armaments industry in World War
One.

Monday
February 16th Deborah Lavin, Charles
Bradlaugh and the First International

Saturday
February 28th 70 years since the 1945 Attlee Government:
Francis Beckett, Ian Birchall, John Newsinger and others From 11.30am - [LSHG
Conference].

Monday
March 16th Launch of A History of Riots (CSP) Keith
Flett and others

All LSHG seminars take place in Room 102 at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate
House, Malet St, WC1 and start at 5.30 p.m. with the exception of February 28th.

On Saturday 28th February at 1pm, the Wakefield Socialist History Group will be holding an event HOUSING AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE at the Red Shed, Vicarage Street, Wakefield WF1.

With speakers:*Cllr Hilary Mitchell*Karen Fletcher (Secretary, Barnsley Against the Bedroom Tax)*Alan Stewart (Convenor, Wakefield Socialist History Group)*Kevin Feintuck (rank and file housing worker in Sheffield)The chair is Kitty Rees.Admission is free and there will be a free light buffet.

Queer Season at Sutton House

Starting
in LGBT History Month, Sutton House is hosting its first Queer Season, a series
of exhibitions and events celebrating the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and
queer communities.

1265th
February to 29th March,Weds
to Sun 12pm to 5pm

Building
on February 2014's exhibition 'Master-Mistress', the first LGBT History Month
event to be held in a National Trust property we think, '126' is a
crowd-sourced audiovisual experience featuring all 126 of Shakespeare's Fair
Youth sonnets as read by members of the LGBTQ community. Each sonnet is
self-recorded and is accompanied by video portraits of the contributors.

Join
The Amy Grimehouse for their special presentation of that 90s classic, The
Craft. Explore Sutton House and participate in some anti-Valentine's spells,
Hex-Your-Ex, the Nancy Booth, The Craft Craft Room with binding and poison pen
Valentine's cards and more. All before the pre-screening show with the Bitches
of Eastwick. The screening will make way for the 'Invoking the Spirit of Manon
Ball' with Connie Francis on the jukebox and more til late. "Now is the
time. This is the hour. Ours is the magic. Ours is the power."

Nick
Fox and National Trust’s Sutton House Present:

Bad Seed 5th
February to 29th March,Weds
to Sun 12pm to 5pm

This
will include the first comprehensive survey of work by South African-born
artist Nick Fox. Arranged over seven rooms, the exhibition brings together
artworks created over the last ten years, principally painting but also films,
installations, cyanotype prints and intricately laboured object d’art from his
celebrated Nightsong and Phantasieblume series. Fox has also chosen Sutton
House to launch a new artistic project called Seedbank, which invites members
of the public to select seeds linked to a veiled dictionary of floral meanings
to give as long term and living tokens of love and loves loss. Bad Seed will be
shown simultaneously with Fox’s International touring exhibition Nightsong, at
Angus-Hughes Gallery (7th February – 7 March 2015), which is also located in
Hackney.

After a couple of successful pickets outside London Metropolitan
University, help us to increase the pressure! Join us to demand the removal of
Bob Lambert from his position as a lecturer on policing and criminology from
London Met university.

Former police spy, Special Branch manipulator, abuser of women,
agent provocateur, Bob Lambert is now lecturing at London Met on policing and
criminology.

This is a man who has:

• Built a police career on
lying, spying on political groups and community campaigns;• Stolen the name
of a dead child to build a false identity;• acted as an agent provocateur,
actively encouraging people to commit crimes so they could be arrested;• has
been named in parliament as having planted a firebomb in a store in 1987;•
started several sexual relationships & fathered a child just to make his
cover more convincing, (a child he abandoned with no contact for 24 years);
while all the time having a ‘real’ family back home;• encouraged other
police spies working under his supervision to follow his dubious example –
including sleeping with some of their targets;• sent undercover police to
spy on the families of racist murder victims and people who have died in
custody;• helped to arrange meetings between police spies and senior
officers looking for ways to smear the family of Stephen Lawrence;• passed
on undercover reports on trade unionists campaigning for better working
conditions on building sites, which was used to blacklist workers;

If
we have any kind of standards at all that we expect of teachers, lecturers,
people in a position on responsibility and influence, Bob Lambert fails to meet
up to them.

He has a long history of lying, exploiting women and
manipulating others for his own ends. Is this really someone London Met thinks
is appropriate to be teaching at a supposedly ‘progressive’
university?

The exposures of the activities of undercover police spying
on campaigning groups, grieving families and political activists over recent
years has led to many enquiries and investigations; women exploited by these
officers are also suing the Metropolitan Police as the institution ultimately
responsible. But the individual police spies themselves need to also be held to
account. Lambert has pathetically ‘apologised’ for some bits of his past;
because he was (belatedly) caught out. He needs to properly face the
consequences of his a_ctions.

This campaign is being organised by
Islington Against Police Spies, a group of local residents and activists. We are
committed to putting pressure on the University and raising awareness of
Lambert’s past, until he is forced to leave London Met. We know this CAN be done
– but it’s not necessarily going to be easy. Hopefully this campaign will get
stronger until it’s irresistible. BUT WE NEED HELP – we call on anyone who
thinks Bob Lambert should not be working in a supposedly progressive university
to support our campaign.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Come down and join the
picket on January 30th. The bigger and noisierour protest, the more notice
London Met will have to take of us.

Protest to the following in the
London Met hierarchy, and demand thatthey sack Bob Lambert:

You can also email Bob Lambert directly and let him know what you
thinkof his activities: r.lambert@londonmet.ac.uk Tel: 020 7133
4692/2911

Spread the Word - tell others about this campaign, raise the
issue inyour networks, communities, union, etc - the more people know about
Bob,the more pressure we all put on the university, the more likely it
isthat he will have to go.

We will launch the first two issues in a series of pamphlets, the first
introducing and contextualising the project, the second looking into the case
of a soldier sentenced to death on the Western Front on February
5th, 1915.

We are a group of people with different political backgrounds, interested in
what has been called ‘history from below‘, ‘grassroots history’ or ‘social
history‘. As Nottingham and Nottinghamshire have such a long and turbulent
history of socioeconomic transformation, disturbance and conflict, there is a
lot to be unearthed. In fact, the most amazing, inspiring, shocking and
outrageous stories leap out wherever the surface is scratched. [Sounds familiar...?]

…and what we do…

We have been working on a number of different projects since we first got
together in late 2009. Among many other subjects, such as Chartism or the local
history of slavery, we have e.g. been remembering the
successful fight against the Poll Tax
(for instance by celebrating the 20th anniversary of the custard-pieing of
local councillors).

Probably our main project so far has been working on the history of riotous
Nottingham during the Industrial Revolution. There is for instance our popular
guided walk To the Castle!, retracing the 1831 Reform Riots. The publication of
the same title, along with our pamphlet “Damn his charity...“ (on the
remarkable events known as Nottingham’s ‘Great
Cheese Riot’), has just been reprinted in our new paperback book Nottingham Rising…
.

Last summer we (that is ‘Loaf On A Stick Press’) were proud to publish Chris
Richardson’s exciting book A City of Light… on the struggles of courageous women and men
in 1840s Nottingham who challenged the
inhumanities of the Poor Law, contested charges of sedition, blasphemy and
riot, confronted the forces of established religion, and championed new forms
of democratic control.

At present we are very busy working on our new long term research project
regarding those soldiers who served in the local regiment (then known as
the ‘Sherwood Foresters’) and were either sentenced to death or sentenced on
mutiny charges by courts martial during World War One.